Rebound
by Kristine Batey
Summary: Many years after the end of the quest for the Shikon no Tama, Kagome returns through the well.
1. Rebound Part 1

This is a fanfiction based on Rumiko Takahashi's _Inuyasha._ All characters are the property of Rumiko Takashi and Shogukokan. 

Rebound 

by Kristine Batey

One morning the sweet, goofy boy who had once told her he could never love any other girl looked at her from the face of a grown-up man and said, "I have to tell you . . . there's a woman at work, a young woman in the office." 

To her surprise, her initial reaction was a rush of relief—_and that,_ she thought, _tells us where _this_ relationship stands._ Later that day she surprised herself again by being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hurt and anger. She had to grab the edge of the gurney to steady herself, glad that she had given her resident the actual job of stitching the old gentleman's shin. As it was, he paused, alarmed, thinking he had done something wrong. "Doctor?" he said—not "Doctor, am I screwing up?"—he was a senior resident, experienced enough to know not to tip off the patient. She stilled the wave, came to herself, and glanced casually at the wound, giving him a collegial little nod. Actually, the stitches were a tad too tight—nothing that would be a real problem, but the GP who ended up removing them would have to fuss and pull a bit. She would mention it to the resident after the patient was gone. 

That night on her way home she almost stopped by her mother's house to check out the well, but thought better of it. 

And then, once she was inside her own apartment, she almost turned around and headed back to her mother's home. 

He had moved out. Really, truly moved out. Not that he hadn't warned her. _If you don't mind, I'll stop by today during your shift and clear out my stuff._ She had expected he'd take a suitcase, his toothbrush and shaving kit, odds and ends: enough to live on while he was getting set up with his new—new what? New life? New obsession? New piece of ass? 

She was angry again. 

She had the urge to do the spurned woman act from the movies: cut up his clothes, shatter his shaving mirror, throw his shoes off the balcony. But there was nothing: no clothes, no shaving mirror, no shoes, no toothbrush, no small change on top of his dresser, no coffee mug with his name on it. With his usual thoroughness, Mister Perfect had cleaned out everything, _everything, _that said a man named Houjou had shared her home for a dozen years. 

No, wait: there in the lavatory wastebasket was a length of mint-flavored dental floss. That morning, like every morning, he had spent eighteen minutes flossing his damned perfect teeth, after which he had sat down at the breakfast table to tell her, "I swear I never meant for this to happen." She carried the floss to their bedroom—_her_ bedroom. His drawers were empty, his side of the closet, empty, he had taken his _pillow._ In the drawer of the vanity she found a pair of nail scissors. She stood in front of the mirror with its ring of soft pinkish bulbs watching herself cut the floss into little tiny pieces: a scowling woman on the brink of middle age committing an insane act, but attractively lit. She scooped up the pieces of floss, carried them to the toilet, and threw them into the western-style commode, which she flushed. Some of the pieces disappeared in the cascade; the others drifted lazily back into the bowl. It took her three flushes to get rid of them all. Damn him. 

She threw herself on the bed and thought again of the well. 

And thought of it, oddly, again and again over the next few months. 

It turned into an amicable parting, if there is such a thing. They agreed that they had been too young, they agreed that they had grown apart. Had they agreed that they were disappointed? That he was too dull, too ordinary, too nice, too orderly, too civilized, too—perfect? That she was too lost, too angry, too dissatisfied, too driven? 

She even went to the wedding, sat with the family. The bride, whose name was Miyu, like the vampire, was young, but not that young—twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Not an O.L. looking for a husband, but a manager who unexpectedly found True Love. And it was love. This young woman, the new Missus Houjou, wept with joy at her own wedding, and her husband became misty-eyed just gazing into her face. The bride's voice quavered as she spoke of their few months together, of the funny, kind man who surprised her with flowers and ice cream and late-night trips to funky blues clubs, to all-night pizza parlors, to puppet shows. Who was this man, this exuberant, spontaneous, lovable man, and where had he found a puppet show at one o'clock in the morning? 

The answer came to her: he was the man who loved Miyu. The man who had found new life in Miyu's eyes. The man who had _never meant for this to happen_. Who had, no doubt, stepped off an elevator one day onto a mysteriously wrong floor, wandered bewildered down an eerily unfamiliar corridor trying to find his own office, and instead found the love of his life pegged to the ladies' room door by an arrow through one pert little breast. Kagome pictured him cupping one hand over the unpierced breast—just for leverage!—and then quickly, perfectly slipping the arrow out with the other, nimbly catching the sleeping maiden (Was Miyu still a maiden? She was pushing thirty. Probably not.) with his spare arm, if he had a spare arm; Kagome was on her third glass of champagne and couldn't keep track of how many of his arms she'd already used in this scenario. She started to fume about the hand on the breast, then remembered herself in the same situation. She turned to the man on her left, a friend of the groom. "If I had it to do over again," she said, "I sure as hell wouldn't go for the ears." 

The man stared at her. He was middle-aged, balding, with heavy brows. She had never seen him before in her life. "If you're a friend of the groom," she said, "How is it that I don't know you?" 

"Ah," he said, looking into her eyes. "You must be the ex." 

It was as though she'd been stung by a wasp, by one of the _saimyoushou._ She was _the_ _ex_. The ex-lover of Houjou Junsei. The ex-Lady Kagome, ex-companion of Inuyasha Who Seeks the _Shikon no Tama. _

She lowered her eyelids a bit and peered at him from below the veil of her lashes. "I'm not an _ex_ anything," she said. "I am a board-certified emergency medicine physician." She batted her lashes. "And a damned good one," she added. She leaned over so that the neckline of her little black dress would gap open a bit. The Friend Of The Groom turned pink. He was not a man in front of whom many little black dresses had gapped. 

Kagome shot a quick look at the head table, and the quick look turned into a long look. Houjou the Perfect and Miyu the Sweet were looking at her. And then at each other. And whispering. And sharing a special little smile. _Oh, shit, _she thought, _they're _happy_ for me! _He's_ happy for me! I'm sitting here flirting with some black-suited guy from his office, and they think I've found True Love._ The horrible realization struck her that she had deliberately been seated next to this man, that the Bride and Groom had hoped they would hit it off. She wondered if the Friend Of The Groom was also an Ex Of The Bride. A waiter came by and filled her champagne glass. She chugged it. "I guess you like champagne," said the Friend Of The Groom. He leaned closer and favored her with a conspiratorial squint. "Maybe you could tell me a few of the _other_ things you like," he murmured, his breath a little cloud of stale cigarette smoke and garlic. 

She set her forehead against his large, shiny one. "I like…claws. And fangs. And golden eyes. And . . . dog ears. I . . . _love_ . . . dog ears." And then she fell off her chair. 

They refused to let her drive herself home. At first she argued with them, but Houjou pointed out proudly to Miyu, "Higurashi spearheaded a campaign by emergency workers to discourage drunk driving. It was fantastically successful! Injuries attributable to drunk driving decreased in the city by—what is it, Higurashi? Twenty-one point eight percent?" 

"Twenty-one point seven-six," she said. He was _bragging_ about her! The bastard had the nerve to _brag_ about her to—to the woman he really loved. His first choice. The one he had been secretly hoping would come along someday. 

Houjou was smiling into Miyu's eyes. "Well," he said, "that rounds up to twenty-one point eight. I think we can give her the other point oh-four percent, don't you, Miyu?" The two of them grinned at each other over Kagome's head—they were on either side of her, holding her up, Houjou in his dinner jacket, Miyu in the third dress she'd worn that day, a full-blown white-taffeta-and-lace Western wedding dress with a four-foot train draped over the arm that wasn't supporting Kagome. Years from now, Kagome thought, they would point her out on their wedding videos and tell their children, _That was Higurashi, a girl who went to middle school with Daddy._ (They would conveniently overlook the years of fumbling at each other in movie theaters, tiptoeing down dormitory fire escapes, the shared futons in student digs, and that dozen years of respectable co-habitation.) _Higurashi had a little too much champagne that night. Mommy and I had to practically carry her to a cab! You should have seen Mommy in her wedding dress, try to keep Higurashi from falling on her face!_ It suddenly occurred to Kagome that the man who had followed them out of the hotel was the videographer. She burst into tears. 

Houjou flagged down a cab, and the two of them maneuvered her to the curb. Houjou propped her against the fender and said, "I don't like the idea of you alone in that big, empty apartment. I'm going to have him take you to your mother's house." He leaned in to give the driver directions, and a couple of large bills. "For your trouble," he said. "You're going to have to help her up a lot of stairs." Kagome was still crying, and her nose was running. She wiped her face on her arm, leaving a long black streak of mascara and a shiny trail of snot from wrist to elbow. Miyu in her white wedding gown stared at the arm and took a step backward. Kagome lunged forward to hug her; Houjou neatly blocked. They were a real team, these two. 

"Miyu," said Kagome, "you're so kind, helping me like this, you're such a … such a…" Such a what? Such a tramp. Such a slut. Such a bitch. Such a whore. Such a contender. A winner. 

Miyu was demurring with a concerned little frown. "No, Kagome," she whined, "we _love_ you." Losers. Exes. We love 'em. 

"No," said Kagome. "If I were you and some old . . . friend, old girlfriend, got drunk at my wedding I don't think I could do this. I think I would just—put her out of her misery. Arrow through the heart. _Thwack._" The grown-up man who had killed and eaten the boy who had once said he could never love anyone but Kagome pushed her into the cab and slammed the door. As they pulled away, Kagome could see them standing at the curbside arm in arm, Bride and Groom, a life-sized version of the little figures on top of the cake. 

And that's how she ended up at the well. 

Understand, she had been to the well many times over the years. At first, it had been every day. Every day she had stood on the rim of the well and launched herself into the air. No, not necessarily _stood._ The first few days she had stood; then she had sat, dangling her feet; then she had held onto the wooden lip and cautiously lowered herself, as she tired of slamming into the bottom of the well. She actually did that every day for more than two months, two long, bruised, aching months. After that it was every couple of days, every few days, once a week, every couple of weeks, every now and then. Whenever she found herself weeping into her pillow or crying over her homework, she would head for the well. After her first post-Inuyasha date; after her first kiss; after the first anticipatory trip to the drugstore—Mister Perfect was a planner: a man of action, yes, but only after appropriate preparation. Had he and Miyu walked to the drugstore together? Had he asked her if she was really sure? Had they stopped for a Coke? Had he held her hand across the table, the brown paper bag on the table between them, and told her she was the only woman he would ever love? 

Kagome opened the door of the little shrine. 

It had been years since she'd tried this, years since she'd given up, finally outdone by tender black-and-blue knees and elbows and hopes. It was dark; it was late, almost midnight. Across the courtyard the house was dark, her mother long gone to bed, her brother at his girlfriend's place across the city, her grandfather in the cemetery next to her father. She sat on the steps inside the little shrine; she was starting to cry again. It was too dark in there, pitch-black, she couldn't do it, she didn't have the courage. She sat for a moment, trying to compose herself. She was still drunk, but not as drunk as before. She rummaged in her little formalwear pocketbook for a tissue and found a glow-in-the-dark _Shikon no Tama_ keychain, with her house keys, car keys, and a little penlight she always forgot was there. She pushed the end of the penlight and a tiny ray of light poked into the darkness. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom; that and the little beam of light were enough to coax her down the stairs. 

She sat on the rim of the well looking at the keys in her hand. Her car was back at the hotel; she'd have to go get it tomorrow. She released the button of the penlight, so that the only light was a bit of moonlight filtering in from above and the eerie glow of the authentic plastic _Shikon no Tama_ on her palm. It was a yellow one; the yellow were for prayers in loving memory of the dead. 

They had understood destiny well enough to believe, even when all but a few shards had slipped from their hands, that the day would come when the half-daemon Inuyasha would hold the complete _Shikon no Tama_ in his hands and speak the words that would determine his own fate, and perhaps all of theirs as well. He had seen enough to know that the jewel was dangerous, and that he himself was equally dangerous. He had taken her aside to tell her his decision: if possible, he would become human, and restore Kikyou to humanity as well, and the two would live out the remainder of their human lives together. The original plan. Such a good thing, good and noble, would destroy the jewel—depending, of course, on Kagome. Could Kagome give him up, give him to Kikyou with her blessing, go home to live her life—maybe not without regret, but without bitterness in her heart? 

He was human when he asked her that. They sat away from the others, the campfire a candle flame in the distance, the dark ghost of the shadowed moon floating above them in an ocean of stars. A tiny flare of red anger burned within her because she knew he had talked to Miroku first, knew that Miroku had pointed her out as the stumbling block, knew that Miroku had suggested he present himself this way so that she could see, right there in his face and hair and hands, the sacrifice he himself would be making. 

She looked at the ground, twisted a blade of grass between her fingers. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know that I can promise you that." 

He sighed, and scowled, but kept his temper, and she knew Miroku had coached him, had told him he mustn't explode, mustn't let the discussion turn into a shouting match. "I see," was all he said, and turned his face away. She did the same. There was a long silence, and then he said, "There is another way." She looked up. His gaze was steady, his face calm and sad. "You could stay here with me. With us. It would be…as it has been, except I would be as I am now." He gestured to indicate himself, his human body. "I would be neither hers nor yours. Husband to neither of you. Lover—to neither, I suppose. Or to one, or to both. I would be with you whatever you will have of me, and the same with her. No questions asked on either side. This would be a matter for your approval, and hers. She—she had my promise, fifty years before I met you. She will set her terms, and then you will set yours within her limits, and I will do…what can be done." 

She wanted to scream, "Are you crazy?" She wanted to hit him. She wanted to slam him to the ground with her single word of power. She looked at his face, at the silent resignation there, and knew he understood she was thinking all those things. And then she found her mind cutting through the anger and jealousy and bitterness to a single point. "I would have to leave my family," she said. "You're asking me to leave my home forever and live with you." Suddenly she wasn't the Lady Kagome, the brave and resourceful companion of Lord Inuyasha, the beloved woman who had denied her own heart to stand steadfastly by the man who was bound to another. She was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who wanted to go home and grow up. She saw his eyes widen with surprise at her answer; it had never occurred to him that there might be issues other than his bond to Kikyou. He seemed to look at her from across a gulf, a chasm that she now understood had always been there: the great gulf of time, the gulf she had been trying to straddle for all those months. 

She reached across the gulf and kissed his forehead, then lifted the prayer beads from around his neck and set them gently in his hand.   
  
On the rim of a well on a night in the twenty-first century of the Common Era, the woman who had once loved and lost Inuyasha the Half-Daemon pointed a tiny beam of light down into the shadows, where it was swallowed by blackness. 

They had all collaborated on the wording. They were asking for two different things, from a jewel that twisted even the best of intentions. Kagome thought of all the stories she'd read, all the pitfalls that beset those who were granted magic wishes. Miroku had some good ideas, as had, surprisingly, Shippou, the trickster kitsune child. In the end, Inuyasha hadn't asked to be human, or to turn Kikyou human; he'd asked only that they be allowed to fulfill the destiny from which Naraku had turned them, that of a young, living human man and woman, still able to remember the events that had later befallen them, yet prepared to be husband and wife together. During the discussions, Sango had turned to her and said, "Kagome-chan?" meaning, _Is this your choice? Can you stand to talk about this?_ and she had calmly patted her friend's hand to say, _I'm fine. This is part of my role as the Lady Kagome._

On the last day, with Naraku turned to dust by Kagome's arrow and Sango's brother Kohaku revived by the healing sword Tenseiga, with the jewel whole and pure in Kagome's hand, Inuyasha the _hanyou_ had spoken to the creature who was Kikyou, and she had assented to their plan, offering a few minor but canny suggestions about the wording. Then the Lady Kagome passed the jewel into the hands of the Lady Kikyou, and the Lady Kikyou gazed steadily into the eyes of her beloved Lord Inuyasha as she in turn passed it along to him. 

It was simple and quiet. As he transformed for the last time, the _Shikon no Tama_ melted like ice in his hands, and then it was all over. Kikyou gave a cry of delight as she felt her life return. The dead-soul insects suddenly spiraled upward and were lost in the sky. The young couple gazed at one another in wonder; unlike Kagome, Kikyou had never before seen his human form. 

Doctor Higurashi shifted her weight on the well. She wasn't dressed for this, with her little black dress and high-heeled shoes. She swung her legs back and, with the help of the penlight, made her way back up the rickety stairs. 

The night was dark, but not as dark as those nights had been on the other side. There was a fingernail sliver of a moon. Inuyasha would have been _hanyou_ tonight. She tiptoed on her spike heels to the door of her mother's house, the house where she had grown up. _Here is the doorway where Houjou Junsei first kissed me goodnight. Here is where Grandpa clutched at his chest and silently fell to the earth. Here is where Inuyasha Who Seeks the _Shikon no Tama_ burst through the door to drag me back to his world. _There was the kitchen. She stood in her stockinged feet looking for—something, a snack, an inspiration, some one thing that would turn her life around and set it in the direction it was meant to go. She found a bottle of sake. 

That would do. 

She took a swig right out of the bottle. It was awful; cooking sake. Well, it was something. It was occurring to her that as soon as she got drunk enough she was going to hurl herself into the well, and also that she wasn't fifteen anymore and she might very well break something important doing it. She decided to leave a note for her mother, just in case she ended up lying at the bottom of the well yelling for help, or not able to yell at all. She tiptoed carefully across the linoleum, clumsy from drink and from her slippery nylons. It was after two o'clock; her mother was asleep upstairs. Her only company was one of the housecats, which padded comfortably after her, curious. On her mother's desk in the tatami room she found a pencil and paper and wrote a note: _Dear Mom, I'm here, I thought I'd stay over. The wedding was lovely, the bride was beautiful, the groom was a lying, cheating, two-timing bastard._ She crumpled the note and started over. _Dear Mom, I'm here. The wedding was fine, but I thought I might stay here tonight. Just for fun, I thought I'd try the well again, so if I'm not in my old bed, please check the little shrine! Love, Kagome._ Best she could do to ward off death by stupidity. 

She started to put on her shoes, thought better of it, and went back to the kitchen. In the refrigerator were some pickles and rice and a few slices of cold chicken, as well as her brother's stash of Kirin. She fixed herself a plate, washed it down with a bottle of beer. She had now had more to drink on this long night than in the entire previous six months put together. She could just tiptoe upstairs to her old room and fall asleep. Tomorrow she would have a hangover, but she didn't have a shift until 23:00. She could sleep in and forget about it all. 

Three o'clock. The Bride and Groom were in bed in a hotel somewhere, maybe sleeping. Tomorrow morning—no, this morning—they would fly to Crete for their honeymoon. _Crete? _This was a man who was too suspicious of foreigners to eat spaghetti! 

If she was going to go, she needed a sweater. She slid down the hall to the closet. There were several sweaters and jackets, some of her mother's and a couple of her brother's. It seemed like Souta was never going to pull that other foot out of the nest. Neatly folded on a shelf were old things, one of them a girl's school uniform. Kagome almost crowed with delight. _What if I showed up wearing my uniform,_ she thought. _Then what would he think? _She dragged over a chair and stood on it to reach the shelf. Eyes glowed green in the corridor; she had attracted the other two cats. The three of them watched as she shimmied out of the little black dress and into the tiny green skirt. It came a good three inches short of fastening, even when she sucked in her breath as far as she could. There was a full-length mirror on the closet door. Even with the zipper open, the skirt bulged with the swell of her hips, and her behind hung out in the back. _Maybe with the top,_ she thought. She struggled into the middy blouse, one arm a sausage cased in its long white sleeve. She pushed her head through the neckline and tried to pull her other arm through, but the fabric was too snug around her bust and the arm wouldn't move. She gave up and started to pull off the blouse, then was seized by panic as she realized she was stuck. Her bust was larger, her midriff was larger, her shoulders were wider, her arms were rounder, she couldn't get out of the shirt. 

She sat down on the chair, the arm in the sleeve in the air over her head, the other arm folded under the shirt between her breasts. All three cats were watching her with impassive feline interest. "You guys could help me," she whispered. The cats blinked, one at a time. "Inuyasha, look at me!" she whispered. "How can you resist this?" The cats switched their tails; one of them, the big tom, began to wash his back vigorously. "This isn't funny," she said, but of course it _was _funny, or would have been, had anybody been there to laugh with her. Damn him. She was ready to cry again. 

She managed to wiggle the front elbow free, and began to peel the shirt upward over her shoulders. It was stuck fast. She gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and forced both upper arms outward, thinking to pop a seam, but the shirt had seen a lot of wear and tear in its time, and all the seams had been laboriously hand-repaired. There was a loud ripping noise: the fabric of the blouse had given way, and the back was torn in two hopelessly ragged pieces. She struggled out of the shirt and stared at the sad tear. Now she would never wear it again, never be fifteen again, never again be the Lady Kagome traveling with the companions of Inuyasha. Trembling, she folded the blouse, as if to disguise the terrible thing she'd done. She folded the skirt as well and climbed back on the chair to hide both on the shelf. She saw herself in the mirror, a woman of a certain age dressed in bra, panties, pearls, and sheer dark pantyhose. The body that had pleased her earlier that day as she slipped into the little black dress, the body of a trim woman in her prime, now looked massive and ungainly, nothing like the lithe girl's body that had lived in that little sailor suit. She sat down on the chair and forced herself not to cry again. The little black dress was crumpled in a pile on the floor. Two of the cats had lost interest and wandered off, the other waited patiently for her to vacate the chair. 

On the very last day, after Kagome had wept her goodbyes to the others, Inuyasha turned to Kikyou with a questioning face. Kikyou—the real Kikyou, the human Kikyou, Kikyou freed from the curse he had once inadvertently laid upon her—met his eyes, then gave Kagome a look of such pity, such compassion, such kindness, that Kagome had hated her forevermore, even as she had understood unequivocally why Inuyasha had never stopped caring for his first love. Understanding passed between the woman who had been a _miko_ and the man who had been a _hanyou,_ and Kikyou made an affectionate little shooing motion with her hand, sending him on his way with a tiny smile. And so he walked Kagome one last time to the well, her backpack over his shoulder. They stood there silent before one another for several minutes. Finally she understood that he would not move or speak until she had taken the initiative, so she cleared her throat and said, "Well, I guess I've got to go eventually." She looked up to see his face full of—what? sorrow and regret and acceptance; maybe not the numbing grief she herself felt. The last thing she said to him was, "I could never love anyone else but you." The last thing he said to her was, "I will think about you every day." And then they embraced—not kissed, but embraced—and he held her hand to help her climb onto the rim of the well. She closed her eyes and jumped, and was all the way into her own bedroom before she realized she had forgotten her backpack. 

Kagome made a grab and rescued the little black dress just before the white cat claimed it. She stepped into it and pulled it up to her shoulders, twisting awkwardly to reach the zipper along her spine like a turtle turned on its back. Maybe she would just go to bed, stay the night and get up and cry to her mother. She shoved the chair with its unyielding cat back against the wall and closed the closet door, then tiptoed upstairs. She stopped by her mother's room to whisper a goodnight—more for her own lonely sake than for her mother's—and stood in the doorway staring blankly for a moment at the empty bed. Of course, her mother was out of town with her sister. Kagome and Souta had argued about who would come by to feed the cats. 

She was really alone. 

She was going to do it. 

She stopped back at the closet, grabbing a sweater this time—hooded white angora, the dress would be a mess. Oh, well. Inspired, she stopped in the kitchen to grab a better flashlight. The sake was still on the table; she grabbed it as well. Her mother's feet were much smaller than Kagome's, and Souta's were much larger. The stiletto heels would have to do. She took another swig from the bottle as she picked her way across the courtyard and into the little shrine, stepping carefully down to the side of the well. She sat on the edge of the well, feet dangling. Suddenly one shoe dropped into the darkness. Kagome swore and turned on the flashlight; she could see it on the dirt floor of the well. Now she'd have to go down there. She held her breath and jumped— 

into space. It was as she'd somehow known it would be this time, just as she remembered it—that sense of floating, of time expanding, then the rush, then the thump to the ground. She landed awkwardly, one stockinged foot and one high heel; by throwing her weight to the side, she avoided turning her ankle. She stood quietly for a moment, smelling damp earth and fresh night air, then slipped off the remaining shoe and threw it upward as hard as she could. She waited, bracing herself, for it to come crashing back to her head, but the arc was right and it disappeared into the paler gloom above. She switched on the flashlight. The vines still hung into the well, just as they always had. She tucked the sake into one pocket of her mother's sweater and the flashlight into the other with her keys, took a deep breath, and began to climb. She had a few bad moments as the vines reminded her she had acquired mass during the last twenty years, but after a few breathtakingly precarious pauses, she reached the lip of the well and hauled herself lengthwise over the rim, rolling off to land flat on her back on the soft grass of the clearing. 

Her heart leapt as the mossy scent of the forest rose to meet her. Spring was turning to summer; the woods were alive. With the help of the flashlight, she picked her way carefully through the trees, the silty floor cool and damp against her stockinged feet. Her nylons were ruined; she stopped and pulled them off, almost discarding them until the mental image of some future archeologist puzzling over them convinced her to tie them around her waist. 

She stepped out of the woods and paused in awe. The sky was incredible, more beautiful than she remembered, the great cloud of the Milky Way bisecting the velvet black with its spray of glittering diamonds. The slip of the moon rode low on the western horizon. The village lay dark and quiet before her in the last hour of night; soon the east would lighten to lavender and gray, the stars would fade, and the first birds of morning would begin their song. 

She watched for the hut that had been Kaede's, the little house that had been their home on this side. She drew closer to the cluster of houses and her heart sank. The hut still stood on the edge of the village, a little way away from the others, but the herb garden was gone, the roof fallen in; it was obvious that nobody was there. Surely Inuyasha and Kikyou had stayed there, with her sister. Had they died, moved, disappeared? It hadn't occurred to her the house would be abandoned. She stepped gingerly to the doorway and shined her light inward. The hut was a shell, less than a shell; the roof beams had rotted and fallen in and one wall was gone. At a loss, Kagome pulled her mother's sweater close around herself. Suddenly it was like her first day through the well: this world was a terrible place, hostile and foreign. She thought of her mother's empty house, of her own empty apartment: both were better than this sorry, deserted ruin. She opened the sake and took another drink. 

She curled up in what remained of a corner and dozed for a while: maybe an hour, maybe more. When she awoke the sky was light and she heard movement in the village. She crept out carefully, joints achy from the pre-dawn damp. Outside the nearest house a young woman with a baby in a sling was scattering feed for a few rambunctious chickens. Kagome approached her tentatively, terribly aware of her own short dress, of the bottle of sake banging against her hip, of the pantyhose tied ludicrously around her waist. The young woman—young girl, really, she was no more than sixteen—stood wide-eyed as Kagome bowed too low before her, the still-childlike face open-mouthed as she took in the bobbed hair, the smeared mascara, the pearls, the elegant little gold wristwatch, the deep red toenails. "Excuse me," Kagome began. "I am a stranger looking for old friends. Lady Kaede, Lady Kikyou, Lord Inuyasha? This was their house, I think, years ago." 

The girl recalled her manners and returned the bow, flustered. "I don't know…there are graves," she said, "that they say are the wise women, Lady Kaede and Lady Kikyou." The pit of Kagome's stomach dropped. "But those have always been there, all my life. Inuyasha is what they call the man in the forest, the man who cuts wood. We call the forest Inuyasha's Forest, but not for him. Inuyasha is the name we have here for the boogeyman. We say, 'Go to sleep, or Inuyasha will get you!' I think he calls himself after that. We bring him a chicken sometimes, don't we, Yuki-chan?" she asked the baby on her hip. The baby looked at her gravely. 

Suddenly the long night caught up with Kagome. She wanted to sleep, to forget all of this. She should have stayed at home, slept alone in her old bed, taken a bath and washed her hair and done her nails and forgotten all of the men who had ever left her. She had not expected to find Kaede alive after more than twenty years. But Kikyou was dead? Had been dead—how long? All of this child's life. This girl, this young mother, had been born years after Kagome had left this place; to her, to a whole generation in this village and throughout Japan and throughout the world forever, the quest for the _Shikon no Tama_ was history—no, not even history, a legend from the olden days. Kagome bit her lip and blinked back the tears—wouldn't she ever stop crying?—and said, "I believe that man may be the man I once knew, who called himself Inuyasha. Please, where would I find him?"   



	2. Rebound Part 2

Rebound (continued)

The girl furrowed her smooth brow. "In the forest, if you follow the path from here, there is a glade, and in the glade an old dry well that we call the Bone Eating Well," she said. "Do you know it?" 

"I know it," said Kagome, and thought, _Old wooden well, long vines, woman's open-toed black patent leather pump with three-inch stiletto heel lying on the ground right next to it._

"Go past that well," the girl continued, looking to the baby for confirmation, "a little to the left and about another, oh, three hundred paces, and there is a holy tree, a very large tree." 

"I know the tree," Kagome said. _I know the tree like I know my own hand, like I know my own heart--no, better than I know my own heart._

The girl smiled a dimpled smile at the baby, who smiled dimples right back. "Well, then, just past the tree is a hut, and that is where you'll find Inuyasha." She bowed low, and Kagome did the same, and then quickly turned to head back to the forest, just in case there should be anybody left alive in the village who still remembered her. 

The sun was up, gentle light filtered in through the trees. The day would be warm. She passed the well, passed her incongruous shoe. Beneath her feet were roots and leaves and cool clay. This is what walking had felt like to Inuyasha in his bare feet as he had carried her on his back, day after day. She had rarely been barefoot in those days; he had never worn shoes. She could see the tree a little further on. Soon she would see him again. She stopped, opened the bottle, and took yet another swig. 

He was standing outside the hut chopping wood. She came up silently and stood, quiet, watching him. Once upon a time she would not have been able to creep up on him; he would have known she was there, known by her scent, caught her scent the moment she appeared in the well and run to her, trying to look gruff but face glowing with delight. He would have called out her name; she would have responded with his. Now that sense, the one on which he had relied the most, was denied him forever. Had she been an enemy, he would be lying dead now, never having known what killed him. 

She stayed still for several minutes, watching him swing the ax. His body had thickened, filled out; he had been a wiry, almost skinny boy. He still wore his familiar hakama, his legs a mystery inside the ballooning red trouser legs, but the jacket was off and he had peeled down the white under-kimono to work bare-armed and bare-chested in the warm solstice morning. At least he had gotten to keep the kimono. She wondered if he still had the sword. 

His torso was well-muscled and glistening with sweat, his shoulders broader than she remembered them. He had not cut his hair, not given in to the ubiquitous _mage_ hairstyle. His hair had been raven-black when she last saw him, but now it was shot with gray, although still thick and full. How old was he? Forty? Not yet--thirty-seven, thirty-eight, two or three years older than herself, unless some of the fifty years of stasis had been piled back onto him. She considered: late thirties looked right--old perhaps to a teenager, like the girl in the village, but still young. He was one of those people who gray prematurely; by the time he was forty, forty-five, his hair would be entirely silver again. 

He stood with one foot on the ground, the other, the left, on a section of log. She was surprised to see that he wore shoes--_geta,_ the traditional wooden sandals. As she watched, he finished the job and stopped, putting his fists on his hips, and puffed his cheeks: _whew,_ a gesture so typical of him she almost wept again. He swiveled his head, seeming to cast around himself for something, then saw it and reached for it. Kagome's eyes widened as she saw where his hand was heading. There was a wooden crutch leaning against a tree. He grabbed the crutch, swung it towards himself and under his arm. Now she realized that the left leg, the one on the log, was shorter somehow than the other. The foot was there, and whole, but seemed to be shaped oddly, and turned the wrong way. He took a step; the leg was almost useless, the foot dragging, and now she saw the reason for the _geta: _it protected his foot from being scored by the ground. She felt pity and regret rise up through her body and spill out over her face, and that is when he saw her. 

He didn't move; just stood there, the crutch supporting his weight in place of the atrophied leg. He looked at her face, reading what was there, without reaction, without emotion. There was no question that he recognized her. Once they had stood just like this, in almost this very spot. She had watched him embrace Kikyou, realized that he would never give Kikyou up, and they had stared silently at one another as she comprehended what it was that destiny was asking of the Lady Kagome. She took a step forward, as she had on that day, but this time she spoke. "Good morning," she said, and then flushed with shame because the words seemed so banal, so inappropriate for a moment such as this. 

He considered for a moment, then bowed very slightly, leaning on the crutch. "Good morning," he replied. He paused for a moment, then added, "It's been a long time, hasn't it?" She relaxed a bit; that statement was as trite as her own. What should she do? Run into his arms? She had a horrible mental picture of herself surprising him, knocking him off his foot, breaking his crutch, his arm, his good leg. Instead she stepped forward slowly, and he looked at her bare legs. "Mind," he said, "you'll have splinters in your feet," but it was a moment too late, and she howled as a long sliver of wood jabbed into the ball of her right foot. "Shit," he said. 

He swung to her side surprisingly quickly. She was wobbling on her left foot, right knee bent, looking over her shoulder to try to see her injured sole. He caught her around the shoulders, supporting both of them with the crutch under his right arm. For a moment they swayed together and she thought they would both go crashing to the ground, but he found the balancing point and they remained upright. He caught his breath--again, that familiar _whew_--and then he said, "All right. We can do this." 

"That's great," she said. "What are we doing?" 

He shot her a strange look, assessing, suspicious, and then replied, as though speaking to a particularly dense child, "We're going into the house to take a look at your foot." 

"Well," she said, "that makes sense." 

He frowned at her again, one curious eyebrow shooting upward, but he didn't speak, only grunted, took a deep breath, and swung the crutch forward, throwing his weight on it. She tried to follow him, her sake-fuzzed brain laboriously sorting out the physics of the situation, which foot she was standing on and which was his good one and how they were balancing on the crutch. They tottered for a moment, but his arms and good leg were strong, and they held. After a moment--mostly through his efforts--they worked out a pattern of sorts, and carefully made their way into the deep shadow of his little hut. 

For a moment they both stood still, disoriented by the sudden darkness. Even in the shade of the god-tree the air had been relatively bright, green and gold light filtering down from between the leaves. In here was as all such houses she'd seen, dim and smoky from the firepit on the floor. The floor was bare wood and a few tidy boxes held what little he owned. There was an air of impermanence to the place compared to, say, Kaede's house; she remembered her most recent hours in Kaede's house and thought sadly about how little permanence really amounted to. There were no chairs, of course, no easy surface to sit or lean on. She spent a moment pondering the logistics of disengaging herself from his arm and lowering herself to the floor. He understood and moved his hand from her shoulder to her arm, steadying her as she sorted out the process of shifting her center of gravity to where she could catch herself in a kneeling position. There was a cracking noise from her knees as she settled to the floor. He grunted again and sat heavily a little distance away from her, using the crutch to support himself down to the length of his arm, and pulled his white kimono up over his arms and chest. "All right, let's see it," he said, and he reached around and grabbed her ankle, sending her sprawling. 

She lay on her back and gaped up at him, caught somewhere between laughter and outrage. He was squinting at the foot in his hand. Between the two of them was an enormous expanse of white leg; the little black dress had ridden up almost to her hips. He was privy to an unobstructed beaver shot, if he cared for one, but his eyes didn't stray up the leg. She didn't know whether to be grateful or offended. Suddenly he grabbed the other ankle as well, devoted a few seconds to critical comparison, and said, "Your feet are really dirty." 

She jerked her feet out of his hands and pulled herself up. "You, of all people, have no business making comments about . . . about the dirtiness of other people's feet!" she cried. 

He sat back with a patient sigh. When had he discovered patience? "Your first aid book says it's important to clean around the wound before you treat it," he said. 

She gawked at him. "My . . . my first aid book? What do you mean, first aid book?" 

"You left your first aid book here," he said. "It was one of the books in your backpack." 

"You read it? You can read?" she said. And then, "You still have my backpack?" 

"I brought it back home," he said. "I could read a little then. I…we…Kikyou could read really well, and she was clever with words. We looked at them a lot. She helped me. There was a dictionary, and … it was like we were working out a puzzle. She…Kikyou…it was interesting for her, the world that you live in. That I had been there, and had seen so many of the things in your books." 

He sat quietly then, saddened or embarrassed or both. Kagome looked away from him. "I'm sorry," she said. "They told me in the village about Kikyou. How…long ago? How…?" 

"I had her for about ten months," he said. His voice was gruff, and he looked away into the distance. 

The words were like a blow to Kagome's chest. Ten _months_! Only ten months? About as long as they and their companions had traveled together. After all that, all that suffering and courage and blood and pain, that was all they got? She thought back. What had she been doing, ten months after she found her way home on that terrible, lonely day? Sitting at her desk in high school, or chatting with her friends at McDonald's, stealing kisses or a little more than kisses in an out-of-the-way spot in the park? 

He was talking again. "There was a fever," he said. "She'd been nursing people, like she always did. And then…" he sighed and fumbled, at a loss for words, "…it took her, too." He didn't say _she died,_ didn't mention death. "We had…we thought…it looked like there might have been a baby on the way." She closed her eyes, engulfed with pain--pain for him, pain for herself. Ten months. She had still been trying to get through to him--not every day anymore, but often, every few weeks, dropping from the rim onto the hard-packed dirt below. He had been free, unbound, and still the well had not let her through. Immediately, she was ashamed of herself. Yes, she had been disappointed--more than disappointed, heartbroken. But this man she had loved, this man who had been so close to her heart, had been hurt, was still hurting, had lost his beautiful young wife to death not once but twice, had lost his child, had sacrificed everything to gain the _Shikon no Tama,_ and it had reached out to betray him yet again. 

"Well," he said, "this isn't mending your foot." He scooted along the floor unceremoniously on his behind to the doorway. There was a dipper in a bucket of water at the door, and a piece of cloth hanging somewhere nearby, out of her line of sight. He splashed water on his hands, then dampened the rag and scooted back, once again taking up her foot. "Where is it?" he asked, but a second later got his answer as the rag brushed the tiny protruding end of the sliver and she yelped, jumping away. This time he kept hold of the ankle, sending her flat on her back. "Shit," he said again. He shot a stern glance over her toes. "Just lie there quietly," he said. "I promise I'll be gentle." 

She looked up at the ceiling and laughed. "I wanted you to say that twenty years ago," she said. 

His hands were motionless upon her foot. She lifted her head; he face once again had that curious, assessing expression. After a moment, he held the foot close to his face, squinting in the dim light, and then scowled. "Dammit," he said. "I can't see it. Come closer to the fire." 

"Wait a minute," she said. "I have a flashlight." He gave a quick little nod; he knew about flashlights, she had supplied them from home during their travels. She reached into her pocket and handed him the bottle of sake. 

He stared at it dumbly for a minute, then looked at her. "You _are_ drunk," he said. "I thought you were drunk. What the hell are you doing, drinking like this? Is this what you do now?" 

She flopped backward onto the floor. "Shit," she said, closing her eyes. "No," she said, "this is _not_ what I do. I … this is…was…a special occasion." She sat up again and looked at him; his mouth was twisted a bit, either in anger or to suppress a laugh--but of course he never laughed, rarely even smiled. Kagome pulled herself up into as dignified a posture as she could manage lying drunk on the floor of a 16th century hut with her dress hiked up to the top of her thighs and a man she hadn't seen for more than twenty years holding her foot up in the air. "For your information," she told him, "I was at a wedding. That's why I'm dressed up like this." 

He regarded her gravely, her dirty bare feet and legs, her black dress with its down of cat hair and angora fuzz, the torn pantyhose tied around her waist, the mascara streaked down her cheeks and up her arm, the slim gold watch, and the neat little string of pearls. "Ah, so." he said. "Ways are different on your side of the well. Is there actually a flashlight?" he asked. 

"Oh, yeah," she said. She fumbled in her other pocket and brought out the flashlight, and along with it, entangled with it, her keys. He took the light in one hand and caught the falling keys with the other, leaving her foot hanging in the air. After a moment it grew heavy, and she set it down. It dropped onto his thigh, the bad one, and he flinched. Whatever was wrong with his leg, the trouble was there, just above the knee, and it was still painful. A long time to be in pain--the muscles of the foot and ankle were shrunken, the injury old. 

He was staring at the keys--looking, she realized, at the keychain, the glowing yellow _Shikon no Tama._ She could tell by his face that he recognized it, and she felt her own cheeks beginning to burn. She tried to think how to explain it to him, this glass-and-plastic representation of the thing that had destroyed his life, but couldn't find any words that would justify reducing his personal tragedy to a trinket. He handed it back to her without a word, then turned his attention back to her foot, clicking on the light and scowling. 

Suddenly her toenails caught his attention. He folded back her toes and stared for a moment at the red polish, then released the foot to reach over and grab her hand and inspect her unpainted fingernails. This time he set the leg down carefully, resting the foot gently on his good ankle, which was tucked up into half of the cross-legged posture she remembered. His other knee remained unbent, the lower leg and foot at an awkward angle. 

She wondered if it was the knee that had been injured, or the hip, or just the femur. She narrowed her eyes, mentally tracing as best she could the line of the hip, the flare of the iliac crest under the _hakama_, imagining the smooth insertion of the femoral head in its socket. The hip might be all right. The knee--impossible to tell through his kimono. If the femoral shaft had been broken very close to its seating against the tibia and there was no other injury, a total knee replacement--augmented, of course, by extensive physical therapy--might bring about an excellent result. A more proximal break might do well with surgical re-fracture and pinning, again assuming aggressive postoperative PT. If there was significant nerve damage, if the apparent atrophy was secondary to denervation rather than just to lack of use, the situation would be more difficult. In some of these cases, amputation was actually preferable: the patient had better use of the limb and a smoother gait with the prosthesis than with the natural musculature. Of course, that was more problematic in a case like this, where the injury seemed to be located above the knee; the prognosis was always more guarded with an above-the-knee amputation than a below-the-knee one. It also depended on how much damage he'd done to the articular surface of the femoral head by using the leg at that unnatural angle. Her eyes moved back up to assess the pelvis, trying to gauge the angle at which he was holding the thigh. . . . Inuyasha sat perfectly still, her hand still in his, watching her stare at his crotch. "It's great to see you, too," he said. 

Kagome pulled back her hand and rolled herself into a ball, her knees tucked before her chest with the sweater wrapped around them, her head on top of the knees, hair hanging forward. "I'm so sorry," she mumbled into her knees. "I didn't--I wasn't--I--we--we could--could do something about that leg." 

"Could we?" he asked. 

She peeked up at him from below the fringe of her bangs, lifting her head just slightly. His face was curious and--amused?--one eyebrow was raised--but not angry. "I--we. Medical science. I'm a doctor now." He grunted a bit, bowed a bit in acknowledgement. "In my--realm, doctors can do a lot to fix injuries like that." She lifted her head a bit further. "Doesn't it surprise you to know I'm a doctor?" 

He looked puzzled. "No, of course not. Weren't you studying? Kikyou and Kaede also--" 

"Of course," she said. "Yes, I was studying, but not to be a doctor. That was just for the high school exams. Everybody does that. Medical school came much later." 

"Ah," he said, and looked away. "I'm sorry. There's so much about your time I've never figured out. The books were much more difficult, once there was just me." 

Kagome reached out a hand and rested it on his arm. "I'm so sorry," she said. "You lost her because she was a doctor, like me. Can you--would you like to tell me?" 

He shrugged. "Fever," he said. "Took about half the village. She and Kaede cared for them. One day she took sick, like the others. Pain in the throat, inside the throat all white, tongue all red then--burning up, delirious, and red all over the skin. Just like everyone." 

Kagome closed her eyes. "Scarlet fever," she murmured. Half the village dead of strep throat. She mentally rehearsed her streptococcal monologue: _Here's a scrip. You're going to feel better in a couple of days, but you have to finish all the pills or it'll come back. Stay home from school till you've been on the meds for 24 hours, so I don't have to look at all your classmates. Call me if you're not feeling a lot better by the end of the week. OK?_ She shivered. Sixteenth century medicine. Call me if you're delirious, if you're dead, if your joints are so inflamed you can't walk, if your kidneys have failed, if your heart valves are destroyed, if you have any of the sequelae that we in the twenty-first century expect to see in third world countries, but so rarely in the former domain of Musashi that we have to write reports and send copies all over the world when an advanced symptom turns up. 

She recalled Kikyou as she'd last seen her, young and sweetly prim and smiling--she would have been a high school girl, maybe an undergraduate. Kagome had seen thousands of Kikyous in her career, swabbed their raw, splotched throats, patted their hands, handed them the prescription. They smiled at her, they loved her, they had been sick and now the doctor was making them all better. 

Inuyasha said quietly, "Kagome, are you all right?" 

She was in the hut, her hand still resting on his arm; his face was gentle, concerned. He had spoken her name. She laughed a little and said, "I'm supposed to be comforting you." She paused, and then added: "Inuyasha." His face did not change expression. Did he notice her response to her own name? She sighed. "Is that when Kaede died, too?" 

"Kaede was years later. She had a day she didn't feel well, but it wasn't terrible. She passed in her sleep." He paused, looked away again. "I--there was another girl, a village girl, a year or so after that. You probably wouldn't remember her, she would have been just one of the kids. We--I married again. I took care of Kaede, and then I married again. We had a baby, but it was born too soon and only lived a little while. And then a few days later my--Hanae--the mother died." 

"Oh, Inuyasha," she said. This time the name came easily to her lips. She reached for his arm again. She didn't need to ask; she could imagine the midwife, a woman called to the childbed from milking or sweeping, catching the tiny, pathetic, doomed infant in her dirty hands, pressing on the pudendum to extract the afterbirth and colonizing the poor grieving young mother with a bouquet of microorganisms. The baby had been mature enough to live for a bit. She thought of the hospital that was her second home, the neonatal ICU with its monitors and pumps and heaters and bilirubin lights and foot-pedal-operated sink with antibiotic soap, the tiny babies in their stocking caps. _I hate this place,_ she thought. _I want to go home._ "I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I'd been here--me, the person I am now. I wish I could have been here to save them." 

He smiled a bit. "You're a good doctor, huh?" 

She smiled back. "I _am_ a good doctor. Is that a funny idea?" 

"No," he said. "You were always a good doctor. You always took good care of us. You were such an expert with the medicines from your home. Kaede was always impressed." 

Kagome snorted. "I was a kid," she said. "I was making it up as I went along. I bought myself that first aid book and I studied it so hard--I was so afraid somebody would die…" She shook her head. "I never in the world thought I would be a doctor. I was going to teach school or work in an office until I found a husband. It's just…" She looked down at her hands. "I just… missed… doing something important. At first I thought I'd be a nurse, but the doctors are the ones with the power. The doctors make the decisions. So I thought I'd be an obstetrician, a doctor who delivers babies, because that seemed like a good job for a woman. But when I was an intern I did a rotation in the emergency room, and I was hooked. People coming in, torn apart, and we jumped in and saved them. It was like being back …" She stopped, embarrassed. "This probably makes no sense whatsoever to you." 

He considered. "_Emergency room_ was in one of your books. I don't know _rotation_--I think you were saying you went to that place to learn, and you like to care for people who have been in battle. You were very good at that. They're smart to have you to be a doctor for them." 

Kagome felt her cheeks grow warm. Praise from Inuyasha! Who would have thought it? "That's good," she said. "Everybody I knew thought I was crazy." But she thought, _Not everybody._ And she remembered Houjou Junsei making pots of coffee, massaging her tired feet, bragging about her to his dubious parents. Bragging about her to his bride. He had been proud of her. What had happened? 

"What happened to your leg?" she asked. 

"Cannonball," he said. 

"_Cannonball?_" she repeated. "How? What? Here? Is that what happened to the house?" 

He snorted. "War. I was in the army." 

"In the _army_? You were a samurai?" 

He smiled at that. The fangs were gone forever, and there was a gap in his smile. Inuyasha had not spent eighteen minutes every morning for the last twenty years flossing his teeth. "Rich bastards from fine households are samurai. I'm a guy from a small village. I was a foot soldier." 

Kagome's mouth dropped open. "Inuyasha, you're a hero! You're the son of the great Inutaisho! You killed a dragon! You destroyed the _Shikon no Tama_! Your blood is nobler than--than all the samurai put together! How could you be just a foot soldier?" 

He looked at a spot over her shoulder. "The Inutaisho is dead. The dragon is dead. The _Shikon no Tama_ is--gone. It's a fairy tale." 

Kagome shuddered, thinking of the proud and fiery Lord Inuyasha as a foot soldier, taking orders from some little man who was not fit to tell the stories of the _Shikon no Tama._ "So," she said. "What did you do as … as a soldier?" 

He did not meet her eyes. "What soldiers do. Took orders. Killed humans. Got drunk on cheap sake. Fucked whores. All kinds of things I would never have done when I was _hanyou._" He turned to speak directly to her face. "I never raped anyone. I never set a village to the torch. I never looted. I would not have shamed you or Kikyou in that way." 

Something about the look on his face touched her heart, and she clasped his hand in both of hers. "You were hit by a cannonball," she prompted softly. 

He shook himself off, recovered somewhat. "We were in a fucking bog, a quaking bog, trying to fight, but mostly trying not to step in the wrong place and drown. Milord Fucking Idiot who was so in love with the ways of the foreigners brought out his Christian cannon and muskets. Well," he considered. "There we were with our swords, dropping like flies, so which was the idiot? I was complimenting myself on being swift and clever enough to stay alive, when there was a whistling noise, men fell all about me, and then my leg would not hold. I didn't even feel the pain at first, I was so…surprised to feel myself fall. Never thought I would fall." 

Kagome's eyes narrowed. "Where did it hit?" 

His eyebrows shot up in a question. "Where? My leg. My thigh." 

"The knee?" she asked. "Or closer to the hip?" 

"Above the knee. Middle of the thigh. Whole fucking thigh. Does it matter? The leg wouldn't work. The bone was sticking out. I fell into the bog and the others fell on top of me. They died. I lived. The enemy took no prisoners. I lay in that damn stinking bog water for three days under a pile of corpses, men I'd been drinking with a few days before." He sighed. 

"Don't curse the bog water," she said. "It saved your life." 

"How do you know that?" he asked. 

"Bog water has a high acid content. It's antiseptic. It kept you from dying of infection." 

"Huh," he said. "I hid in it, too. When the enemy came by to finish us off, I drew down beneath the surface for as long as I could. Somehow they missed me. A priest pulled me out, a good old man, not like our friend _houshi_. He patched me up as best he could, and we both ran off before the next wave of battle came through. I tried to report back to my unit, but there was no unit left. Finally I gave up and made my way back home." 

"Our friend _houshi_?" she said. 

He looked away again. "I don't know," he said. "We all went our own way. Myouga went back to Kyushu. Miroku and Sango went north, and the _kitsune_ with them. Sango was angry at me for marrying Kikyou. She told me how Kikyou tried to hurt you…" he said. 

"That creature wasn't Kikyou," she answered. "It's all right." She sighed. "Everyone's gone, then." 

"Gimme your foot," he said, reaching out his hand. 

She obeyed. He picked up the flashlight and squinted at her foot again, gently rubbing his thumb over the sole of her foot. He grazed the sliver, and she jumped. He grunted, and pressed down on the ball of her foot. She gasped and jerked her foot; he held more tightly and sent a stern look over the tops of her toes. "Do you want this out?" he asked. "Hold still." She relaxed her leg and blinked at him meekly. "Why are your toenails red?" he asked. 

"For the wedding," she replied. 

"Ah," he said, "the wedding. Of course you would need red toenails. But not red fingernails." 

"I'm a doctor," she said. "I wash my hands dozens of times a day, and I need to be able to see that my nails are clean." 

"Good," he said. "Part of you is still sensible. Was it a good wedding?" 

"Was it a good wedding," she echoed. 

It was a combination of things that hit her: Lack of sleep. Too much to drink. The sad story of a bold young hero turned widower and soldier. The loss of their friends. The useless leg. The pain in her own foot. The pain in her own heart. Suddenly Kagome was crying, bawling, great, horrible, whooping sobs, and she couldn't stop. Inuyasha froze, wide-eyed, then reached over and scooped her up to sit awkwardly on his good knee. His face had lost the veteran's jaded expression; he was abashed, flustered, a teenaged boy again. Kagome laughed to see him, and then cried even harder. He held her close against his shoulder and rocked her. Her friend, her dear old friend. "Kagome," he said. "I hurt you. What happened? What did I do?" 

"I," she said. "I--after I--after I left here--that--day--that--last day--" and then she had to stop to cry for a few minutes. His face was the picture of panic as he alternately rocked her and patted her on one body part or another--head, shoulder, arm, back, briefly on the ear--"Ow! Not the ear," she said, and started laughing and crying again. She took a deep breath and started over, trying to keep her voice level. "After--I--left--here--that--last--day." She closed her eyes. She was only fifteen years old. She had just said goodbye to her friends, her comrades. They were staying, and she was going. For almost a year she had been the center of the group, the rallying point. Now she was the outsider. They had closed ranks and pushed her out, for the good of the cause. Sango, sad and miserable, had finally acquiesced to the plan, remaining mute because she could not agree with the others. Even teary-eyed Shippou had given up. And Inuyasha--her first and dearest friend had sent her away, chosen another and let her go, watched her drop into the well forever…_I hurt you. What did I do? _She took another breath and went on. "There was a boy in my school who said he loved me. I went ou-ou-out with h-him on the rebound." 

Inuyasha frowned. "_Ribaundo_," he said, repeating the Japlish, "I don't know that word…" She considered, took a breath. "Rebound. Like a ball bouncing. I hit, I bounced, he caught me." 

"Ah," he said. What was that face? Sadness? Guilt? Sorrow? 

"All through high school," she said, "and university, and … and afterward." 

"He was your husband," said Inuyasha. "He died?" 

"No," she said, "not my husband, and no, he didn't die. We lived together, we…were together, but we never married. Never made it legal, never had a wedding, never…we always understood we didn't need to make it official. I never wanted it to be official. I needed to--I wanted my options open. And so did he, I guess. Because about a year ago he--found--another--" She was crying again. 

"It was _his_ wedding," Inuyasha guessed. "The wedding you came from was this man, the man you loved." And of course that was true. The man she loved. 

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. I couldn't help falling in love. I know I promised you--" 

For a moment he knit his brows, puzzled, then he remembered. "It's OK," he said. "I didn't think about you every day, either." 

Their eyes met, and she burst out laughing and sobbing at the same time. "So, you had to go to his wedding?" Inuyasha asked. 

"I wanted to," she said. "It was the right thing to do. It--it wasn't an angry breakup. He really, really loves her. They belong together. I'm happy for them." 

"Ah," he said. "That's why you're drunk and crying." 

"I just--" she said, "Why couldn't I be the first choice? Just once?" 

He looked down. Now his face really was sad. "Beautiful Kagome," he said. "Always kind, always ready to give. She saves everybody. She kills the bad guy and then walks away, leaving everyone else to be happy. Her lover betrays her and she wishes him well. She patches up sick people, rights all the wrongs, is generous and good, and all the rest of the world just goes on being selfish and stupid." 

She looked at him sharply, afraid for a moment that he was mocking her, but there was no trace of irony about him. "That man is dishonorable," he said. "He's not worthy of you. To have given himself to another when he was bound to you…" 

"He loved her," Kagome said softly. 

Inuyasha scowled. "You had a right to his heart. He was not free to love another. There's no honor there, to use a woman in that way." 

She sighed, and looked into his eyes. "You really loved Kikyou," she said.

There was a moment of silence, and then he said, "Yes." 

"He really loves his new wife," she told him. "They belong together. You belonged with Kikyou. I'm sorry you lost her. I don't want him to be with me, when he's happier with someone else. I want--" She thought for a moment. "I want that kind of love for myself. It's never happened. I wish it had. I don't understand why I was sent here," she said. "I thought that meeting you was some kind of destiny. Why me? Why not have somebody else bring you back to life? Some local girl." And with a sudden thought she answered her own question. "Because you were _supposed_ to be with Kikyou," she whispered. "Because the person who freed you had to be somebody who would go back home when the show was over. I hate destiny," she said. 

"Maybe you had your own destiny," he said. "You became a doctor. You save people. Would you have done that if you'd stayed on the other side?" 

"That's _it?_" she cried. "That's what destiny wanted with us? Kikyou gets ten months of life, you get crippled, and I get--_career counseling?_ After all those months of--of fighting, and hurt, and …" 

"Would you give them up?" he asked. "I wouldn't." His smile was gentle. 

She reached out and touched his face, then pulled back her hand. "No," she said. "I wouldn't either." And then she said, "Come back with me." 

He blinked and sat back a bit. "Come back with you?" he said. "Through the well? No! I can't do that! How can I? Is that what you want? Is that why you're here?" 

"I don't know why I'm here," she admitted. "I just needed--something. So I decided to try the well. I wasn't even thinking. I guess I just wanted to see, to see people who had meant something to me, to get back to happier times. It didn't occur to me Kikyou wouldn't be alive. I didn't think about it at all. I guess…I thought I could go back. I thought I'd be back, and you'd all be here, and we'd all be happy, the way we were…" There had been a picture in her mind. They were all young again, they were racing through the woods, she rode piggyback grasping the shoulders of Inuyasha, his silver hair brushing her face…_I like claws,_ she had said. _And fangs. And golden eyes. And dog ears._ And running through the forest on the back of Inuyasha. 

They would never run through the forest again. 

Even if she coaxed him back, even if they repaired the leg, they would never again be young, the leg would never again be whole, their hearts would never again be unbroken. 


	3. Rebound Part 3

Rebound (continued)

"Why should I come back with you?" he asked. "I don't understand your world. There's no place for me in your world. What would I do there?" 

"What do you do here?" she responded. 

His cheeks turned pink. "I have…work, I cut wood, the villagers trade with me…" He looked away, his mouth a thin line. He had nothing; he was a charity case, and he knew it. "I have seen your time. There is no forest, nothing I could do that would be helpful or worthwhile. I have no learning, no--high school, no university. I've read your books, I know people in your Tokyo must have learning, an education. I have nothing. What would I do?" 

She said quietly, "Well, after a few months, you'd walk." 

They were silent for a minute, during which he would not look at her face. Finally he said, "Well. That's a temptation, isn't it? Greater than the temptation of the _Shikon no Tama._" He looked up. "Let's take care of that foot before your…your mi-cro-or-ga-nisms…give it an infection." 

He reached for the foot. Subdued, she let him have it. "You really did read that first aid book, didn't you?" she said. 

He turned the flashlight on the sole of her foot. "And the biology book," he said. "And math, which is not so hard as you said. And English, which is very hard. And history." He sighed. "By my reckoning, it's now the year 1584 of the common era. We heard news months ago that Lord Idiot Nobunaga had been assassinated. In a few years my old home of Kyushu will fall to Hideyoshi, and eventually our Houjou will be defeated." 

She reacted to the name; he raised an eyebrow. "The man I--the man whose wedding--he was a Houjou," she explained. 

"Ah, Kagome was a samurai's woman," he said, running the light up and down her foot. 

"Not a samurai," she said. "A systems analyst." 

"I don't know what that is," he said. 

"Neither do I," she said. 

Inuyasha lowered the light and grinned at her over her foot. "_I_ am a man who cuts wood," he said. "That you can understand." 

"Come back with me," she said. 

"No wood to cut there," he replied. 

"Please," she said. "You could keep me company." 

"Ah," he said. "Then it would be my turn for _ribaundo._" 

Kagome bit her lip. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know my own heart anymore." 

"That," he said, "is something I understand." 

Suddenly Kagome felt overwhelmed by a terrible need. She glanced surreptitiously around the room: nothing that looked like a chamber pot. "Inuyasha," she said. "Do you have--I have to--is there an outhouse?" 

He stared at her blankly. "Outhouse?" he said. "There's a forest." 

Kagome lay back, closed her eyes and groaned. "I hate this era," she said. "I mean, not everything. But this part--I hate this part." 

She opened her eyes. He was kneeling over her in his odd one-legged way, holding out his hand. She let him pull her up. He clambered awkwardly to his feet--foot--and with the help of the crutch braced himself to haul her to her feet--foot. They were quite a pair. He hurried her, as best they could hurry, out the door and into the trees, him hobbling on his crutch. She winced and stepped carefully on her heel, trying not to drive the splinter further into her sole. 

They stopped at a relatively secluded patch of brush. 

"Turn around," she said. 

"As you command, Lady Kagome," he said, turning his back. "Don't piss on your foot or you'll have to wash it again." 

She snorted. "I'll have to wash it again anyway, but not from that. Urine is sterile." 

"'Urine is sterile,'" he repeated. "What's that in real words?" 

She sighed. "Don't be difficult. Piss is clean. No microorganisms." 

"Huh," he said. "How about that? Stinks, though. But not as much as shit. Shit's not sterile, is it?" 

"No," she said. She was standing barelegged in a cluster of saplings, her bladder aching, trying to convince herself to strip off her panties and go. "No," she repeated, "shit's about as unsterile as you get." 

"Bad planning on someone's part, putting them so close together," he said casually. 

She burst out in giggles; her bladder sphincter screamed. "I can't believe I'm standing in the woods having this conversation with you," she laughed. 

"Are you going to go?" he asked. 

"I'm psyching myself up," she said. 

"Damn," he said. "Women." 

"Men," she replied. It had been an ongoing source of amusement for the males of their group. The girls would tiptoe off quietly, desperate for privacy; Kagome always brought along extra packets of tissue for the grateful Sango. The guys would just find a tree. On one occasion she and Inuyasha had been heatedly bickering and without breaking off his end of the argument he had undone his trousers, sent a stream off into the brush, and tied himself up again, entirely unaware of Kagome's sudden dumbfounded silence. Did he remember that? Probably not. 

Damn. Her tiny black purse was sitting back in her mother's kitchen. "I can't do this," she said. "I don't have any tissues." 

"Whole bush full of leaves right in front of you," he said. 

"Go away," she said. 

"I'll just have to come back for you," he said. He leaned against the nearest tree. 

She was really desperate. Grabbing a sapling for support, she stood on one leg and slipped off the black silk panties, looping them over one arm. "If you turn around, I swear I'll kill you," she said. 

"I'm not that desperate to watch a woman piss," he said airily. 

Kagome made a face at his back. "You are the rudest man I've ever met in my entire life," she told him. 

"You knew that when you jumped into the well," he said. He shifted position against the tree with an exaggerated sigh. 

Holding her breath, she set her feet as far apart as possible and crouched, then squinted her eyes closed and released the stream. It thundered to the dry earth like the spray from a garden hose. "You _did_ have to go," Inuyasha observed. "That's what happens when you drink so much." 

Kagome shrieked and looked around for something to throw at him, but the only thing at hand was the panties. "You bastard!" she yelled. "You fucking bastard!" 

He half turned, laughing. "Is this _my_ Kagome?" he asked. "She gets drunk, she curses, she pisses in the woods…" 

"I'm going to kill you," she said. "Inuyasha, I'm going to strangle you with my bare hands." He turned the rest of the way, grinning broadly now. "Aaah!" she screamed. "Don't look at me!" She had splashed her own legs, and the panties still dangled from her arm. 

He leaned backward, bracing himself against the tree, and held out his hands to fend her off. "Black ones!" he said. "When did you start wearing black ones?" She lunged at him, lost her footing, and sprawled on the ground, trying desperately to cover herself with her skirt. 

In the blink of an eye he was beside her on his good knee, the crutch on the ground, the laughter fading from his eyes. "Kagome!" he cried, and lifted her off the forest floor. 

She righted herself and clung to him, both of them kneeling now, the soft linen of his kimono warm next to her face. His arms were around her, his hand in her hair, stroking her neck and the unfamiliar edge of her shingled bob. Weepy as she was, she almost cried again in grief for her shorn hair, one more part of the Lady Kagome that seemed irretrievably gone. She pulled away, sorry to have lost the laughter of a moment before. "I'm all right," she said. "I'm just a mess." 

"Stay here with me," he said. "I'll get you some decent sake, and you can curse and piss in the woods all you want." 

She smiled at him and touched her hand to his cheek, brushing back a long lock of salt-and-pepper hair. "I can't," she said. "I _can't_. I have a mother to worry about, I have a brother. I have people who need me. There are patients who need me. I can't even stay here very long today. I have to be at the hospital tonight, from an hour before midnight until well after dawn. People will be counting on me. I have to be there, and I have to be clean, and I have to be sober, and I have to have had enough sleep that I won't make a mistake that will cause somebody to die." 

He sat back and smiled at her sadly. "It was never meant to be that Kagome would belong to us here," he said. 

"No," she whispered. "I don't think so." 

He reached for the crutch and again they found their respective feet and hobbled back to the hut. "Let's take care of that foot, then," he said. "Outside here, I think. The light's better." He helped her to the bucket outside the door and ladled water into a bowl for her to wash herself, standing quiet and helpful as she used a bit of cloth to wipe her face, her arms, her thighs and ankles. He steadied her without comment as she unceremoniously stepped into the black silk panties, then helped her onto the grass into a patch of sunlight that had found its way through the leaves of the great tree. Once again, he carefully sponged the foot, looking for the sliver of wood, peering closer in response to her gasp as he touched the end. He tried unsuccessfully to grab the end with his fingernails--how easily his claws would have done the job! He had brought the flashlight, but the batteries were running down. She remembered the penlight on the _Shikon no Tama_ keychain and handed him her keys, with a little apologetic grimace. He was getting frustrated, the heat of the day helping to wear down his unnatural patience. 

Suddenly he leaned forward and took the ball of her foot in his mouth, sucking and biting it. She gave a little yelp but clenched her teeth and held still. After a moment he grinned, pulled away, and spat. "Got it!" he cried. He held up the light and examined the foot closely. "Got it all," he said. 

"You got it!" she crowed. "Do I have a hickey on my foot now?" 

"Yes, ma'am," he told her, and he leaned forward and nipped her big toe. A thrill shot from her toe all the way up her leg. She quickly brought her knees together and threw one arm across her breasts. 

He let her have the foot back, and she tucked her legs close, bending briefly to inspect her newly liberated sole. There was an embarrassed pause; then he said, "If you--if they were to fix my leg. How would that be done?" 

"It would depend on what it looks like inside," she said. "We have special cameras--special machines that make a picture of the inside of the body without cutting it open." He nodded, accepting that. "It would have to be done surgically--meaning they _will_ cut it open, a doctor specially trained for that uses medicine to stop the pain and cuts into the leg. Probably they'll have to re-fracture it--" 

"No," he said. "No. Forget it. Just forget about it. No." It was as though a curtain had been drawn from his face to reveal unvarnished horror, to reveal the young man who had lost everything, lying helpless in a pile of corpses, waiting to be butchered, waiting to die of thirst or hunger or disease, his body washed over by the pain of his shattered leg and by the coffee-colored water that looked like an enemy even as it silently saved his life. Had he thought of her as he lay in that dreadful place? No; more likely he had thought of Kikyou, of Hanae with her lifeless baby, promising them all that he would join them soon. Perhaps the life-preserving water had indeed been his enemy. 

She set a hand on his shoulder. "It's not like that," she said. "You would be asleep through the…the procedure. When you awake there will be pain, but there is medicine to help that, and it's not--there won't be the _hopelessness._" 

He closed his eyes, and then said quietly, "Kagome, Kagome, I'm sorry. I'm not…not ready." 

She pulled him toward her and held him close. "It won't be terrible, I promise you," she said. She was using the salesman's trick, the doctor's trick: talk about it as though there were no choice, as though it had to happen. "You'll have good care, there will be someone with you. _I'll_ be there for the whole thing. They'll repair it, it will be in a--a cast, a device to hold it still so it heals properly. That will be itchy and boring, but I'll bring you books, if you want, and keep you company, you can have television and games, and then they'll work with you to build the muscles, to teach you to walk on it again…" She floundered. This felt like the most significant thing she had ever said in her life, and she wasn't breaking through to him. 

He sat back, touched her face as she had touched his, and looked off into the distance. "There are graves," he said. "Kikyou, Kaede, Hanae, my child, they are … a little ways from here, outside the village. I visit them…not every day, but … if I am gone, there is no one." 

She looked down, choosing her words carefully. "My home…my old home, my mother's home now…is this place, this place many years from now. They--the graves are still there. They are all still there." 

"I know your home," he said. "I know about the city of Tokyo. It is all stone. The forest is lost under stone and buildings. I could never find them." 

"They're _there,_" she said. "If you pace it out, we can figure out where." He gave her a sour look. "_I'll_ pace it out," she corrected. "Show me." She stood up; the foot was just vaguely sore now. She reached out a hand and helped pull him upright. 

The graves were outside the village, at the edge of the forest. The two of them knelt together, clapping their hands in prayer. Here was Kaede, who had been their mother and mentor on this side. Here was Kikyou, her rival, her inspiration. His love. And a village girl named Hanae, and a baby never named, the grave marked by one of the little jizo that protected miscarried infants. _From now on, I will care for you,_ Kagome promised them. _I will find you and take care of you, take care of the heart of Inuyasha._

"I'll need to write this down," she said. Inuyasha now wore the crimson jacket of his kimono. He surprised her by producing from its folds a modern notebook and a pencil. They were from her backpack. Kagome flipped through the book in wonder at her own schoolgirl handwriting, the occasional marginal notes in her own hand and that of a classmate--who? –This class is sooooo boring. –Nishida has something hanging out of his nose!!! –Gross!!! –7 more minutes to go!!! I'm dying!!!!! –What are you doing Saturday afternoon? Do you want to come to the pool? –I think I have something else to do. Sorry. 

__

Saturday? she thought. _Sorry. Saturday I have to fix what I shattered, find what I lost, save the world, and have my heart broken. When I get back I'm going to be a doctor, because once you start saving the world you can never stop again._ She tore a blank sheet from the back of the book and handed it back to Inuyasha; she would not deprive him of the notebook, that little bit of her he had kept all those years. Wordlessly he tucked it back into the kimono. Accompanied by the solemn Inuyasha and a handful of curious villagers, she carefully paced out the distance from the tree to the graves, and from the well to the graves, and then from the well to the god-tree, in case her paces would be different on the other side once she had shoes. She folded the paper and tucked it into her brassiere, and they stood silent before one another. The villagers waited a few paces away. 

"That's the crazy man," said a child, "the one we bring food sometimes." 

"Come with me," she said. 

"No," he said. "I'm sorry." He held her hand then, silent in midday sunshine, the breeze lifting his long hair a bit. 

She sighed. "I have to go back now," she said. 

"I know," he replied. "I'll walk you to the well." They started into the forest; the villagers watched for a moment and then went back to their lives. 

The well in its clearing sat bathed in sunshine, the warm smell of summer rising all around it. How could she ask him to leave? The beauty of this place, the wildness of it, had always seemed to be tied up with his soul. She looked into his eyes. They were dark; the golden animal eyes were gone, sacrificed forever to the object he had coveted, the object she had brought back to his hands to destroy him. 

"Won't you change your mind?" she asked. "Won't you at least try to follow me?" 

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know." 

Her heart leapt. "But you might?" she said. 

"I don't know," he repeated. "I'm--I might try," he said. "I don't know if it will let me through." 

"When?" she asked. "Today? I don't know if it will be open very long. I've tried before. I really have. I don't know why it let me through this time--I tried so many times! I swear I did." 

"It's all right," he said. "I know you did. It closed up right after you last time. I tried to follow you," he said. "You forgot your backpack." 

She bowed her head, overwhelmed with gratitude. He had not just abandoned her, he had tried to follow after. What if she had had him in her own time, on her own turf, that one last time? But no; she could not begrudge Kikyou those ten short months. 

He bent awkwardly to the ground and came up holding her shoe. "This must be yours, I suppose," he said, looking at it as though it were some particularly unappealing species of spider. "This is a shoe? You wear such a thing now?" He placed a finger on the long spike heel. She laughed, and they said simultaneously, "The wedding." 

"If you come after me," she said, "when will you come." 

He looked at the sky. "I don't know," he said. 

"I won't be at the shrine after tonight," she said. "I have to be at the hospital at 2300 hours," she said, "so I'll have to leave at least a half hour before that." She looked at her watch. "That's a little more than ten hours from now. I'll stay at the shrine until then, but after my shift I'll have to go home to my own place." 

He leaned down to look at the watch; on an impulse, she slipped it off her arm and handed it to him. "Here," she said, "This hand tells the hours, and the other the minutes. When the little hand gets to here, to the 10, I'll be getting ready to go to the hospital. The other hand counts five minutes for each number. The sweep hand does one minute for each turn around the dial." 

He stood watching it, said, "I see. They are moving, very slowly." 

"If you don't come," she said suddenly, "I'll try to come back. If you don't come through by 9 o'clock--when the small hand is here," she said, pointing--"I'll make one more try to come through the well, just to say goodbye." She had to stop and swallow at the word. "That won't be the last time I try, but I don't know why I'm here," she said. "I don't know if it's the wedding, or the solstice, or the sake--I don't know why I made it through. Maybe this is it, or maybe we have to wait another twenty years. I don't know."   
  
"I'll think about it," he said. "Kagome, I'll think about it, I promise. I might come. I don't know. If I'm going to do it, I'll try to do it before you leave the shrine tonight. I won't leave you hanging." 

"Keep the watch," she said. "Keep the watch. I don't know if it will let me back, but maybe it will let you through. I'll try at 2100 hours, at 9 o'clock. I'll bring you more books," she said. "I'll bring you whatever you want." 

"More books," he said. "I'd like more books. And—something else of yours, anything of you—I don't know what." 

"Come through," she said. "Come soon. I have to go, I'm going to cry again." 

He dropped the shoe and embraced her, wrapping his arms around her. He was warm, the crimson kimono soft and familiar against her face. He gently pulled her away and reached into the kimono. "Your notebook," he said. 

"Keep it," she said, "or bring it to me." He set it down on the rim of the well. She fingered the cloth at his chest. "I know what's missing," she murmured. "The prayer beads." 

"I have them," he said. "In a box in my house. You can't have those back." 

Then he leaned down and at last, at long last, they kissed. 

It was not how they would have kissed years ago, when they were both almost children. She pressed herself to him, and he to her, breast to breast, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. It was a deep soul kiss, his tongue exploring her mouth, her own taking in the gap in the teeth, the slickness of the palate. His hand was under her dress, stroking the black silk of her underthings, pressing her hips into his. A grownup kiss, a kiss full of experience and regret and hunger. And then it was over, and it was time for her to go back through the well. 

As he had done years ago, he held her hand as she stepped on the rim of the well. "If you decide to come," she said, "_tell_ somebody. Tell one of the villagers. Don't do something stupid and…die at the bottom of the well because you broke your other damned leg." 

"If I try it, I'll be fine," he said. 

"_Tell_ someone!" she commanded. 

"All right, all right. I'll tell someone," he said. "If I decide to try it." 

She looked down into the well. Even at noon, the bottom was dark far below. What if the well were already closed? What if she couldn't get home? What if she went crashing to the bottom, breaking her legs, her neck… She closed her eyes and placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. Inuyasha said, "Kagome?" She opened her eyes and found his deep brown ones looking into hers. No golden eyes. No fangs. No claws. No dog ears. And now this face, this grown-up man's face, would forever be the face of Inuyasha in her memory. 

"If you don't come," she said, "If you stay here and marry again and have a child, you have to make the midwife wash her hands." 

"Kagome," he said again. 

She raised her voice. "This is _important,_ Inuyasha!" she said. "This is the most important thing I've ever said to you. You have to do this! You have to…draw your sword and stand over her, but you can't let anybody touch your wife or baby with dirty hands, do you understand? _Inuyasha!_" 

"Kagome," he answered. "I understand." 

"If you don't come through, I'll try to come back with some books," she said. And then she jumped into the well. For the first and only time in her life she looked upward as she jumped, and so for the first and only time she saw what she would have seen any and all of the times she had ever jumped in as he watched: his sorrowful face, the eyes wide with longing, memorizing her own face as though he would never see it again. 

She landed on something hard and sharp: the stiletto heel of her upturned shoe. She rubbed her behind. If Inuyasha came through the well, he would find her with an unsightly bruise on her right cheek. If he came through the well. Probably he wouldn't. 

Probably he wouldn't be coming. Even now, the well might have closed behind her. She looked at the shoe in her hand, remembering that the other lay on the grass on the other side where Inuyasha had dropped it. Would the prince come looking for the maiden—well, the woman who lost the shoe? Or would he just start trying it on the feet that were available on his side? She stuffed the shoe into her pocket with the remainder of the sake, then groped for the ladder and leaned her forehead against it. She had to get some sleep. She wouldn't think about it now, because she couldn't stand to think, to see that face disappearing above her. 

The ladder was old but solid. She was older and less nimble. She climbed out of the well with scraped knees and elbows into the dim light of the well house. It was warm; outside the sun was beating down on the ancient roof. She stepped out into the courtyard of the shrine, blinded by daylight. The sounds were back, traffic and trains and airplanes; on the other side had been birdsong. She closed her eyes against the light and listened. A grove surrounded the shrine complex, all that was left of Inuyasha's forest. The birdsong was still there; the descendants of the birds that had sung to her and Inuyasha that morning were singing to her now. She limped across the courtyard, the flagstones hot beneath her feet. Inuyasha had always been barefoot; this was how the stones had felt to him. She needed sleep, she needed a bath, she needed love. 

Something behind the house caught her attention. A service drive wound its way up from the street to the back of the shrine complex. There at the top of the drive was her car. She walked toward it slowly, in amazement. How had it come to be here? She looked in the driver's window; there was a naked key in the ignition. When Mr. Perfect had left he had remembered to take everything, but he had forgotten to return her car key. What other keys had he forgotten to return? The key to her apartment? Her mailbox? Her heart? Kagome wondered if he had returned the car himself, or simply given the key to someone else. What if he had had second thoughts? What if the car had been an excuse to find her here? She pictured him looking around the empty shrine, the house and the other buildings, never guessing that she had jumped into the well, never imagining what lay on the other side. Surely Miyu was his destiny. Perhaps that was why the well had opened: to keep him out of harm's way. Perhaps Higurashi Kagome meant nothing to destiny, a pawn to be sacrificed or shuttled out of the way in other people's games. 

She kept a set of clothing in the car, and sensible shoes. She opened the trunk: a shirt, jeans, underwear, socks, athletic shoes, neatly packed in a duffel bag next to her black bag, the doctor's equivalent of a bow and arrow. A few books—medical journals, a novel, a book on emergency room logistics. Nothing Inuyasha would want. Were her high school books still here in the house? Probably some of her brother's college texts were still around. 

The cats greeted her at the door. There was no sign that Souta had come by. She stopped in the kitchen, opened a can of cat food, and tossed the nylons into the garbage. She took the sweater with her upstairs to her old room; it would need dry cleaning, as would the little black dress. She left the clean cotton underwear on her bed, deciding to wash out the black silk and hang it to dry in the summer sun while she bathed. He had liked those black silk panties; she didn't want to disappoint him. In the right cup of the bra she found the piece of notebook paper. That was something she'd do before she slept today. 

She showered, shampooed her hair and scrubbed her dirty skin, and then settled in the bath for a soak, willing herself not to doze, not to miss him if he should come. She stepped naked from the tub and toweled off, delighting in the smell of her clean self. He had loved her scent. This time she had been smoky from the wedding, and dirty, and probably reeking of sake. Was that why he hadn't come back with her? Because she smelled bad? But maybe he would come. 

She was hungry. She dressed in the jeans and shirt with the black silk underneath, found her keys, and quickly walked across the street to a small café and grabbed a sandwich to take out. There was a market nearby; she bought some beef, some green beans and onions, some strawberries. If he came, there would be dinner, a simple _donburi,_ and plenty of it in case Souta should show up with or without his girlfriend. She hurried back; no sign of him. Had he come and found the house empty? Surely he would have waited. She started rice in the rice cooker, then took out the sheet of notebook paper. 

She first paced out the distance from the well to the tree; that would tell her how much to adjust her figures, now that she was wearing shoes. Then she paced from the well. It looked as though she would end up on the pavement, and her heart fell, but she stopped inside the perimeter of the shrine, inside the grove, more than a meter from the fence. There was a little tree on the spot, a sapling born of the god-tree's seed. She needed something to mark the spot; she slipped the yellow _Shikon no Tama_ from the keyring and threaded it over a branch: for prayers in loving memory of the dead. She paced back to the god-tree; the measurement was right on. She retraced her steps and again found herself at the little tree that nourished itself on the remains of the young girl who had once been her rival, and the girl who had come after her, and the baby who lived only a moment. She knelt and clapped her hands. _I'm sorry, _she told them silently, _sorry you were left alone so long. I promise I will come often to visit you._

If Inuyasha did not come through the well, it would mean there was another grave in this place. 

She placed a hand on the tree, overwhelmed with grief at the impossible thought that the man with whom she had laughed and cried that morning, the man who had been warm in her arms and in her mouth, the angry, sad, resigned, ribald, vital man who that very day had kissed her and teased her and tried to fix the part of her that was hurt, was here, was dust, had been dust in this place when she drew her first breath and for all the years she was a child here, all the years of her growing up and coming to adulthood. She was too tired to cry anymore; she turned and walked uphill to the god-tree and rested her hand, as she had done on its little offshoot below. "Inuyasha," she said aloud, "I'm here at the tree. It's your turn to come through the well and heal the hole in my heart." But nothing happened, and he didn't appear. 

She had to sleep. Of course he knew the way to her old room, but irrationally she feared he would be unable to climb the stairs and would turn and go home. She pulled an aluminum lounge chair from the storage shed and set it up near the well house, under the shade of the god-tree. She pictured him coming out, coming upon her asleep, touching her hair. Surely he would not turn away, seeing her there. She stretched out there in the dappled sunlight and slept. 

Her stomach awakened her. It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime. The afternoon was hot, and she was still alone. She folded the chair and returned it to the shed, then went into the house. The kitchen smelled of rice. If Inuyasha came, he would be pleased at that homey smell. She ran upstairs to her brother's bedroom. His books were still there, high school and undergrad basic science books, basic literature, political science, sociology—she tried to choose an interesting assortment, but not more than she could carry. She rummaged in his closet, found an old backpack. At 2100 hours she would jump into the well, hoping not to break anything or die. If she made it through, she would bring him the books—she hoped he would be waiting for her. This time they would make love, on the ground under the tree if necessary. If he didn't come through to her side first. 

She carried the books to the kitchen table and began slicing the beef into thin strips. She browned it with a bit of onion, found the bottled sauce in the cupboard, the sake in the pocket of the white angora sweater. She remembered his face above her at the rim of the well. Would he come to her? The dinner would be good. She'd open him a beer, if he wanted to try it; no alcohol for herself. There was no sign of Souta; it would be just the two of them, eating and talking quietly, if he came. They would eat, she would fix him a bath, they would make love—maybe right there in the bathroom, certainly in her narrow bed afterward; there would be time to talk, to love, to doze, and then her alarm would go off and she'd head for the hospital. If Inuyasha came through the well. 

She thought of the little tree with its yellow marker. "You can't be there," she said aloud. "You have to come be with me." And still nothing happened, so she kept fixing dinner, washing the strawberries and chopping the vegetables, and it was while she was french-cutting the green beans that she heard the door of the well house slam. 

She didn't run, just listened. There was a pause, and a clacking sound and a scraping, very slow—_geta_ on the flagstones. She didn't go to greet him, partly because she thought it might embarrass him to have her see him hobbling on his crutch, and partly because she was afraid to find out that the sounds were something else, some workman on the street. Then suddenly she heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground, and she began to run. 

As a matter of fact, she was mistaken. He had made it almost halfway from the little shrine to the house. He wore the familiar kimono and carried—all sorts of things. The sound had been her middle-school backpack, which lay open on the ground, a trail of books fanning outward: her life, her teenaged life, all but forgotten and now come back home. He stood upright on his crutch, aiming a stream of invective at the fallen bag. There was another pack on his left shoulder, a makeshift one equally as large as her backpack; a shaft of wood stuck out of it and she realized he must have brought everything, even the ax. 

She hurried to his side, calling his name. "Kagome," he answered. The katana was at his belt, and her heart warmed. They were not teenagers, but still young enough; perhaps he would yet touch Tetsusaiga's hilt to his child's hand. She caught his shoulders in a quick embrace and they kissed again—not passionately this time but the small, gentle kiss of people who expected to kiss one another every day of their lives. "You came," she said. "I hoped you would come." She smiled to see her gold watch around his wrist. "How did you get up the ladder with all of this?" 

"I made a few trips," he said. His face was tired, and she could see by his stance that the leg was painful. She knelt to pick up the scattered books, marveling as she saw them. All those unpleasant hours of studying, her whole life depending on these books she had forgotten existed. 

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I've started some food." 

He sighed and closed his eyes, drooping on the crutch. "Food," he said. "Food would be very good." 

"I found it," she said. "I found the grave. It's on the shrine grounds. It's in a good place, a green place. You'll be happy," she told him. "We can go look at it after dinner, or whenever you want. I talked to them," she said. "They know someone cares about them. You need to eat and to give that leg a rest." She tucked the books into the backpack "You came after all," she said. "I was afraid you wouldn't." 

"You left this behind," he said. He reached into his kimono and handed her something. It was her shoe, her stiletto-heeled open-toed black patent leather pump, come back through the centuries to be reunited with its mate. "I didn't know if you would need it so I thought I'd better try to get it back to you." 

She looked down. "Thank you," she said. "Does that mean—you'll stay awhile, won't you? Just for—until we see about your leg. It doesn't have to be forever. There are still wild places in the world, beautiful places. If you can't get back and you're not happy, you can try those places." 

He looked over her shoulder. "I brought my stuff," he said simply. "I can try it. I'd like to have this leg working again." 

"I thought I'd fix you a hot bath," she said. "It would really make that leg feel better." 

He grimaced. "Hot day for it," he said. 

"Great for aching muscles," she said. "Once you've had the surgery, part of the therapy for that leg will be long, hot soaks." 

"You're going to be my doctor now?" he said. 

"I was always your doctor," she told him. "And I was thinking I'd wash your back." 

"Only my back?" he asked. 

"Your back, to begin with," she answered. "Do you want dinner first, or the bath?" 

He stopped and paid her the compliment of looking her up and down. The boy she had known had been shy; he would never have looked at her so boldly, but the girl she had been would never have offered to wash his back. He was trying to decide. Approach-approach conflict; he must be really hungry. "Dinner won't take much time. Why don't I feed us first. We'll still have time for a bath, and some time together." 

"Sounds good," he said. 

Suddenly she noticed he had draped the prayer beads around his neck, just as he had worn them long ago. 

She shouldered her backpack. It was terribly heavy, but so, she could see, was the bag that held the remnants of his old life. He staggered a bit under the weight and she was frightened for him, but then he straightened and took a step. She wished she could carry him to the house, but she could no more carry him than he could carry her. The best they could do was distribute the burden between them, the pieces of their old life together and the lives they were living now, all the things that would bind them together and push them apart. They found a rhythm and started for the house, talking as they went, keeping each other company for the rest of the walk home. 

__

When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful. –Barbara Bloom

The End 

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Next: An Epilogue of sorts…


	4. Rebound: Epilogue and Historical Notes

Rebound (epilogue)

A note from the author:

_Oh, dear. That was a bit too middle-aged and poignant, wasn't it? Let's cheer us all up. _

After dinner (Souta didn't show up, and they forgot to eat the strawberries), they made love like otters on the floor of the bath (_That_ was a pretty good day...) and had a nice if somewhat cramped soak together in the tub. She got out first and helped haul him out--tricky, because they were both slippery, but they both saw the humor in it. (She said, in fact, "Are you really Inuyasha? I go away for twenty years and you develop a sense of humor! Where did that come from?" He said, "Probably somewhere on the walk from Kyoto back to the village." She said, "You _walked_ from Kyoto?" He could see her getting all sad for him, so he said, "Or maybe I'm not really Inuyasha. Maybe you just fucked the wrong guy." "Well," she said, "if you're _not_ Inuyasha, you're pretty damn good, whoever you are, so that's OK.") 

Afterward they did it again in her old bed (also cramped, but what are you going to do?), and then she remembered the strawberries, so she raced downstairs naked, grabbed them from the fridge, and ran back upstairs to bed, where they fed them to one another and then napped. When the alarm went off, he walked her down to the car, impressed that she was able to drive such a thing, and then went back upstairs and fell asleep reading _Introduction to Political Science_. That's where he was at 6 am when a surprised Souta finally showed up to feed the cats, all of whom were piled on top of Inuyasha on Kagome's bed. After a difficult moment--Souta is no hero, and nearly fainted--they reintroduced themselves and Inuyasha was introduced to black coffee with lots of sugar, and, when Kagome got home shortly afterward, to fresh croissants, which he quite liked. 

He did have the surgery--several operations, actually, and they did have to do a new knee, and he was predictably bored and grumpy, but he continued educating himself and when he started physical therapy was amused by the fitness facility. ("So," he said, "you have all these machines to do work for you." "Yes," she said. "But because you do no work, you become soft and flabby," he said. "Right," she said. "So you pay money to do pretend work on other machines so you can build up your muscles," he said. "Exactly," she said. "And right now you are driving this car to a place where we can walk around and around in a circle," he said. "If you want," she said, "I can pull over right now and let you out and you can walk the rest of the way there." "No, no," he said. "I wouldn't want to do it wrong.") 

On New Year's Day, other festival days, and whenever he just feels the hell like getting a rise out of people--for example, almost anytime they see the Houjou couple socially--he wears the crimson kimono complete with the katana and the prayer beads, which incidentally have no special power over him but which he wears as a sign of his love for her and because he secretly thinks they make him look rather dashing, in an offbeat way, as does his cane, which he doesn't need quite as much as he pretends to. Otherwise he wears jeans with a t-shirt or western-style shirt, a cowboy hat, and a leather jacket. The orthopedic surgeon who has been "doing" his leg threatened to castrate him if he started riding a motorcycle, but he has learned to drive. Surprisingly, he is a much better driver than Kagome, who has Road Rage issues and drives like a maniac. He once grabbed the keys from the ignition and gave her a public lecture about the purposes of the sidewalk. He was in full Sengoku Jidai drag at the time, she was in her emergency room greens, and the audience of bystanders they accumulated, thinking it was some kind of street theater, burst into applause when he sauntered off, carrying her keys and using Tetsusaiga as a cane. 

For other special occasions he ties back his still-hip-length hair and wears a charcoal-gray three-piece suit--often accessorized with the sword and prayer beads. Young girls have been known to get the vapors at the sight of him in the suit, particularly when he glares right at them, which he does because it gives them the vapors. 

Kagome made up a story about him being an old friend from her girlhood, somebody from a small village in the mountains where she had been sent in the hope that folk medicine would cure her mysterious disease--as indeed it did. Everybody wonders about their relationship. Some acquaintances politely wonder what he...does. Depending on her mood, she tells them, "Pretty much whatever he wants," or, batting her eyelids, "_Everything._" They all speculate in company that she's lost her mind. Men wonder aloud what the hell she sees in him. Women do not. Even Miyu, who is happy as a clam and breeding like a rabbit, takes little glances at him out of the corner of her misty eye. Whenever they're likely to meet, she makes a little pouty face and says to Houjou, "I suppose that _man_ will be there." But she secretly wishes that just once Inuyasha would be there to catch a peek at her little pouty face, if only to look at her in scorn. 

__

There, is that better? 

----

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HISTORICAL NOTE:

In 1543, Portuguese sailors shipwrecked off the coast of Kyushu brought the Western world into contact with Japan and introduced firearms to the archipelago. (Which means _Inuyasha_ takes place after 1543: in several battle scenes the participants carry muskets.) The first Christian missionary, Francis Xavier, arrived in 1549. Oda Nobunaga, seeking to break the political power of the Buddhist monasteries, allied himself with the increasingly powerful Christian community. He was an admirer of the West, and of Western warfare and science in particular. Reports of his conversion to Christianity seem likely to be exaggerated, but at least one source claims he accepted the Christian name "Geronimo." Cannon were in use in Japan as early as the 1550s. Nobunaga was known for using waves of musketmen, rather than cannon, but used cannon in at least some castle sieges (which was enough for me to justify throwing that cannonball at poor Inuyasha). Nobunaga's own Azuchi Castle was designed to resist cannon. (The Azuchi Castle archeological dig is not the same one at which one Dr. I. Houjou of Edo University began the second version of his troubled dissertation, but it bears more resemblance to that site than Dr. Houjou does to either Junsei Houjou or the graying Inuyasha of _Rebound._) 

Nobunaga's ties to the technology of the Christian West revolutionized warfare in the Japanese archipelago and brought an end to the Warring States era. How likely is it that a soldier in the field would have been taken out by cannon fire? Less likely than his falling to musket fire, but not impossible. In fact, the effect of Nobunaga's musketeers was similar to that of the machine gun on trench warfare in the early 20th century. It completely changed the concept of warfare--but not fast enough for the guys with the swords. 

Yes, there is a handy peat bog near Kyoto. 

Here are a few links: 

**On Christianity in Japan:**   
Christian Nagasaki:   
Japanese Martyrs: 

**On Oda Nobunaga's ties to Christianity:**   
Sengoku-Expo.net:   
Samurai Archives: Nobunaga the Ruler: 

**On Oda Nobunaga's ties to Christianity and to firearms in warfare:**   
Washington State University: World Civilizations: 

**Nobunaga as "Geronimo":**   
Three Unifiers of Japan: 

**Cannon in Japan in 1550s:**   
East of India: The Shogun Collection: 


End file.
